


Underage

by Tisaniere



Series: The Argent-Hale Family [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Chris and Peter are parents, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, petopher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 15:56:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8898202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tisaniere/pseuds/Tisaniere
Summary: Peter and Chris are married and raising three kids (adopted son Scott and Peter's niece Cora and nephew Derek), with all the challenges that family life bring up.'Underage' - Derek and his uncle go through age confusion."Do you know what happened today?”"No,” Peter said, distracted by the important task at hand: easing open a bottle of good red wine, “Tell me.”“Derek didn’t want me to watch TV with him.”"The horror.”





	

**Derek**

 

“What are you watching?”

Derek slammed his hand against the TV control and the red-headed woman with a haggard expression paused mid-speech on screen. In the same motion he spun around on the couch and glared at Chris. 

“I thought you were working.”

Chris raised a eyebrow and chuckled a little, “I’m done for the day. Go on, what are you watching?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t care, Derek, you can tell me.”

“Game of Thrones.”

Chris moved into the living room and perched on the arm of the vacant armchair. 

“Ah, I’ve never watched that. Peter’s always said we should but we’re working through Mad Men first.”

Derek didn’t say anything. 

“You can keep watching it, I don’t mind.”

Derek glanced at the screen out of the corner of his eye then pinned his gaze back to Chris, “It’s fine.”

“No go on, it’s ok, I kind of want to see a bit.”

“No.”

Chris was a little taken aback. He and Derek were usually on the same level when it came to what they watched on TV. They had watched the whole box set of Lost together - Scott and Cora had been too young to bother and Peter always rolled his eyes so much that it gave him a headache - and they’d also binge-watched 24 together on the nights when Peter got back from work late. The television was one of the things that the two of them always agreed on. Chris had even managed to get Derek hooked on baseball, Chris’s childhood passion, and they watched games together all the time. 

So for Derek to be this bothered about Chris watching something with him…

“Why not?”

“I’m on season two and it’ll spoil it for you.”

“I just want to see what it’s like. If I like it I can catch up and we can watch it together.”

“No, Chris.”

They sat looking at each other for a moment. Then Chris stood up with his hands raised, “Fine, fine, I get it. Enjoy.”

He left Derek alone in the den and tried not to sulk back to his office. He had fancied an excuse to sack off work and he had lied, he wasn’t actually done for the day. Now he had no excuse but to go back to it until the others started arriving home. Derek was getting over a particularly bad case of stomach flu that had torn through the house in the past few weeks. They had all got it in some form but Derek had been laid low for quite a few days. He was on the mend, well enough to stretch out on the couch and watch TV, but Peter wanted to keep him off for the rest of the week for fear it would come back if he pushed himself. Chris was more of the ‘send them back and see what happens’ school of thought, but Peter was usually right about these things. 

Chris sat down at his desk chair and sighed at the screen. He hated this side of his job. Paperwork, reports, statistics…he was much better on site, looking at things with his own eyes and getting a feel for a place or organisation he was consulting on first hand. He ended up spending the rest of the afternoon cruising baseball scores and wondering about Game of Thrones.

* * *

 

“Do you know what happened today?”

“No,” Peter said, distracted by the important task at hand: easing open a bottle of good red wine, “Tell me.”

“Derek didn’t want me to watch TV with him.”

“The horror.”

“I’d finished work and he was watching something, and I thought we could watch it together. Like we did Lost and 24.”

“That reminds me, we should order the next series of Mad Men soon.”

Chris took the proffered glass from Peter’s hand, “Is there no whiskey?”

They chinked glasses. 

“I thought we promised to keep the hard stuff for the weekend.”

Chris hummed against Peter’s lips, “Oh yeah. Damn.”

They left each other alone long enough to try the wine. 

“So what happened with Derek and the TV?”

“He didn’t want me to watch it with him. I asked if I could and he shut me down.”

“What was he watching?”

“Game of Thrones.”

Peter looked up over the rim of his glass, “Well there’s your answer.”

“What?”

“There’s no _way_ Derek would want to watch Game of Thrones with you, Chris.”

“Why?” Chris asked, struggling not to be insulted. He and Derek were close in their own way, they had a great bond for the situation that they were in and that had taken everyone by surprise, really, even them. But they’d clicked, and it worked. He was never going to be Derek’s Dad, just as Peter was never going to be, and together they could never replace his parents. But there was a sense of family between them and Chris knew that Derek trusted him with important things, sometimes even things he didn’t want to share with Peter. For some reason this snub over the TV was niggling away at Chris’s conscience like a particularly nasty splinter. 

“It’s full of sex.”

Chris paused in the middle of taking a sip of the wine. 

“Really?”

“Yeah. _Full_ of it. The hard core, on-your-knees, dirty kind of sex. Nudity, blow jobs, prostitution, and lots of nasty stuff like rape too. I’m _not_ surprised he didn’t want to watch it with _you_ , his step-uncle slash sort-of-adoptive father…or whatever you are.”

Chris watched as Peter stirred the leftovers from the night before in the pot that made up their dinner. The three kids had all eaten and were in bed: Derek with the trusty sick bowl by his side, just in case, Cora with the special nightlight in her bedroom that seemed to have stopped her sleepwalking, and Scott…well, Scott had Stiles. 

“Ok,” Chris said, gesturing with the hand that held his wine glass, “I’m not sure that I want our sixteen year old watching that show now.”

“It’s fine,” Peter said with a dismissive wave of his hand, “He asked me if he could download it on the TV now we’ve got HBO and I said yes.”

“Even with all the sex?”

Peter wound one arm around Chris’s waist, “Since when were you such a prude?”

“I’m not a _prude_ ,” Chris insisted as Peter mouthed along his jawline, “I just don’t know if Derek should be watching that sort of stuff.”

“Oh the sex is not even the worst of it. There’s a lot of violence and blood and people just tend to treat people badly.”

“How do you even know all of this?”

“Lois watches it.”

“So that’s what you do at work all day, discuss Game of Thrones with your CFO?”

“She won’t shut up about it. I keep telling you, we should watch it.”

“I’m not sure I want to now. I get enough violence and bloodshed at work, thanks very much.”

“It’s supposed to be very good. Derek can handle it, Chris, don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t let Scott watch it but Derek’s old enough.”

Chris tucked his chin against Peter’s shoulder. They were roughly the same height and it was an easy fit against his side. 

“I’m not sure I like that he’s old enough to watch this sort of stuff. When did they all start growing up so fast? Cora has a boyfriend. Scott’s a freshman and wants to make first line. Derek’s…”

“Watching Game of Thrones?”

“Exactly.”

Peter squeezed Chris to him, “I don’t think we have much to worry about. Cora still has a nightlight, Scott would forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on, and Derek’s…”

They both paused and thought about it for a moment. 

“We can’t keep saying ‘Derek is just Derek’.”

“I know, it’s awful, we have to think of another way to talk about him.”

“He overheard me say it on the phone to you last week and asked me what I meant.”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t, I pretended the phone rang again.”

“You ran away from your sixteen year old nephew?”

“It’s scary how much he looks like his father when he gets mad,” Peter said defensively, “It’s like looking down and realising that you’re standing on a landmine.”

Chris detangled himself from Peter’s side and gave the dinner a stir, “Ok fine, he can watch Game of Thrones if you think he’s old enough. But we should start watching it too. At least then I know what he’s seeing.”

“We can take a break from Mad Men after this season and watch Game of Thrones instead.”

 

**Two weeks later**

 

Derek was so engrossed in season three of Game of Thrones that he didn’t hear Chris stalking through the house towards him. It was late on a Saturday night and the house was quiet. Scott was at Stiles’s, Cora had gone to bed, and Bostick was asleep on the couch next to him. He’d bagged the living room television and Peter and Chris had gone to watch their own TV in bed. They were probably watching Mad Men or something boring like that. He’d just got the season three DVDs off Boyd and was going to binge-watch until his uncle or Chris realised he was still up and sent him to bed. 

He didn’t realise Chris was even in the room with him until he was in front of the television. 

“Hey, what are you doing?!”

Chris jabbed at the DVD player and the disc spat itself out. Derek jumped upright and Bostick stirred with a whine. 

“Chris!”

Chris slotted the disc back into the DVD box and turned to Derek with the box set clutched in his hand. 

“You are _not_ watching this show until you’re eighteen. Or twenty one. Or better yet, _thirty_.”

“What the hell are you-?”

Chris waved the box again, stabbed his finger at Derek, and then swept out of the room with Boyd’s boxset in his hand. 

“Chris, what the hell, give it me back!”

He heard Chris’s feet pound up the stairs and their bedroom door slam. 

Bostick put his head back on the pillow and went back to sleep, leaving Derek to sit in stunned silence in the dark living room. 

He ended up watching old recorded baseball games in a sulk until he heard Peter pad into the kitchen. He came into the living room through the kitchen door, holding a bottle of whiskey in his hand. 

“What’s Chris’s problem?!”

Peter looked very much like he was trying not to laugh, “We finally got around to watching Game of Thrones. We got…oh, I’d say about half an hour in, and then he stormed out of the room.”

“Oh.”

“Yep,” Peter said with a loud pop on the ‘p’. 

“Why were you two watching it anyway?!”

“I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

“Did you tell him that you said I could watch it?”

“I did.”

Peter walked past him to the living room door and shrugged, “But I’ve decided that Chris is in charge of the morals and innocence of you kids.”

“ _Why_?”

“Because he has more of them himself than I ever will. Night Derek.”

 

* * *

 

**Peter**

 

“Hello.”

Peter looked across at the woman who had sidled up on his right. He was wearing sunglasses and it allowed him to give her a calculating look without being seen. She was certainly a mother of one of the kids on the field.  

“Hi there.”

“Can I help you?”

He’d gone back to looking out at the field. He was in prime position to see both games at once, and this was why he had chosen the spot by the tree. On his far left there was Cora’s soccer game in full flow, a tense showdown between Beacon Hills Middle School and Devonford Prep. On his right was a friendly lacrosse scrimmage between the senior lacrosse team at Devonford and Beacon Hills High. Scott and Stiles were on the bench but Peter had promised to keep an eye on their game in case that changed. Cora was in full on soccer mode and he couldn’t help but grin as he watched her. His niece was one tough cookie. 

Somewhere behind him at the tree line Derek was walking Bostick to make sure the excitable puppy was exhausted and not tempted to streak across the field and try and eat a soccer ball. Chris was on his way, fielding phone calls from a pissed off client. It was nice for Peter to be here with the kids and Chris to be the one having work crap, for once. 

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Do you have any children in these games?”

Wait. Did she think…?

“Two, actually. One in each.”

“Oh I see. Which two?”

Peter blinked slowly behind his sunglasses and let out an imperceptible sigh. 

“Scott Argent-Hale over there on the lacrosse team, and Cora Hale on soccer.”

The woman’s face relaxed in a second. Suddenly her uppity officiousness fell away and she laughed easily, tucking a lose strand of hair behind her ear, “Oh I see, how lovely.”

‘That I’m not a pervert, or that I have two kids?’ Peter thought. He wondered if Chris was ever mistaken for a weird guy with too much interest in teenagers playing sport. 

“I have one in each too. I’m Dwayne and Lisa’s Mom.”

Peter nodded silently in reply, because he had no idea who Dwayne or Lisa were and this woman was starting to stand a little too close to him. 

“You know, you look too young to have teenage children,” the woman gushed, and Peter’s suspicion was confirmed. She laughed and placed a hand on his arm. He gave her one of his winning smiles in return. No harm in being charming. 

“Why thank you. Technically I _am_ old enough for teenage kids, but in fact both Scott and Cora are adopted.”

“I see,” she enthused with a nod, “How amazing of you to adopt. Are they brother and sister?”

Peter looked around for Derek. Maybe charm wasn’t the best way to get out of this, maybe he just needed to run away. Or a distraction. Derek would be a good distraction, this woman would run a mile at Derek’s glare. Someone nearly scored on the soccer field and a roar of disappointment came up from the crowd. 

“Cora is actually my niece.”

“Ah,” she said with more enthusiastic nodding. Peter checked his phone. Where the hell was Chris? He hoped he didn’t turn up halfway through Peter being hit on by a soccer mom who’d originally thought he was a predator. 

“I’m sorry for coming over like that,” she said in an attempt to pick up the conversation again, “I just…you know, you hear some _terrible_ stories on the news. And when it’s your kids you’re always a little crazy protective, aren’t you?”

“Hm.”

“And you really look too young to have teenagers.”

“Benefit of having teenagers instead of small children, they’re not as ageing.”

She laughed a little too hard at that bad attempt at a joke. 

“And you and your wife never thought of adopting any young children or a baby?”

What kind of person asked this sort of question thirty seconds after meeting someone? He was still smarting from being accused of looking like some sort of sexual deviant. 

“Er, no.”

He decided not to even touch the wife thing. 

“Well that’s very honourable of you. I know that many people would prefer to have a baby to bring up so older children often get left behind.”

Now this was making Peter uncomfortable. He had a sudden flash of little Scott on the first day they met him, looking up at them like a puppy who saw a treat dangling overhead. They’d always wanted to adopt an older kid, there had been no question about it, and when they had clocked those big chocolate brown eyes there was no turning back.

The woman flicked more hair over her shoulder and Peter went back to smirking. Ok, so maybe it felt kind of nice to know he still had it. So sue him, he liked women flirting with him. Women _or_ men, he wasn’t fussed. There was a guy at the coffee store next to his office who flirted _hard_ when Peter went in to pick up his morning joe. There was that man from accounting too, who’d watched his ass leave the room a few times…yeah, he liked knowing people found him attractive. He always had done. It was an ego boost and it gave Peter something that he loved to have: the upper hand. Whether that was through attraction, or knowledge, or something else, he liked to have some form of control. 

“Just did what we had to do.”

“You’re a saint, you really are, I have such admiration for people to take in children like that. And so young, too! It must be great for teenagers to have a young father like that.”

“Bostick, no! Come here, Bostick, _stop_! Peter!”

Peter was distracted from the frankly weird direction this flirting was going in to see Bostick belting for the field. Derek was a few feet behind him trying to catch the dog up, Bostick’s collar and lead in hand. 

Bostick saw Peter by the tree line and changed direction. He started barrelling towards the pair of them, barking in delight. It seemed the sight of a slavering, barking Rottweiler running towards the woman was too much and she started screaming and dancing on the spot as he neared. Peter was torn between laughing, assuring her it was ok, and making sure that his dog didn’t start chasing the Devonford Prep sports teams all the way back home.

He reached out and grabbed Bostick as he launched himself towards them, managing to get a handful of the dog’s scruff and an ear for good measure. Bostick yelped with joy at the excitement of his day and his tail thumped the terrified woman repeatedly. 

“Bostick, sit, sit down you ridiculous dog.”

He tried to grapple the dog still whilst Derek ran up with the lead, but Scott and Stiles chose that moment to appear. With a new wave of pure excitement at seeing the two of them Bostick managed to wriggle out of Peter’s grip and leap up at them. 

Stiles let out a squeak and hit the floor flat on his back. 

“Oh my god Bostick, stop! Ah, Scott, help!”

Chris suddenly appeared at Peter’s side holding the collar and lead. 

“Need a hand?”

“He just yanked himself out of the collar!” Derek explained as Bostick barked and slobbered over the two boys in their lacrosse uniforms. Chris leant over and wrangled the collar back on and then rescued Stiles from underneath the huge dog. 

“Managing fine on your own then, I see?” Chris said with a smirk. He pecked Peter on the lips, “How’s the game?”

Peter glanced across at the woman stood in the middle of the mess that was the Argent-Hales. She was frozen and seemed a touch traumatised. 

“Oh, hello,” Chris said, noticing her too. He held out his hand with his easy, charming smile, “Chris Argent.”

“Nancy Walker,” she replied on automatic, shaking his hand limply. 

“Of course, Lisa and Dwyne’s Mom.”

She nodded mutely. Her beautifully set hair was everywhere. Stiles was wiping the dog drool from his face when he spotted someone else draw up to the chaotic group. 

“There you are!”

Sheriff Stilinski rested his hand on his belt and said to Chris and Peter in that low, serious voice of his, “Can I talk to you two for a minute?”

Nancy Walker looked between the Sheriff of Beacon Hills and the new couple she had just met, and garbled, “Well I’ll leave you to it.”

And then she high-tailed it away from them all at a jog. 

“Sorry, did I interrupt something?” the Sheriff asked. 

“No, no, she was just hitting on me.”

Scott and Stiles both pulled a face. Chris cocked an eyebrow. Bostick tried to take another lunge towards the sports fields and Chris had to pull hard to stop him. 

“Oh really?”

“Apparently I look too young to have teenage kids.”

“You come to one game by yourself and you start flirting with the Moms, do you Peter?”

Derek grumbled something inaudible to Peter’s left. 

“She came onto me. But only after she came over to assess whether I was some weird pitch side pervert.”

“Because _clearly_ you look too young to have a family,” Chris said, dripping with sarcasm. 

“I don’t have a family, I have a pack of feral animals. Anyway John, what did you want?”

“Oh, yeah, I was wondering if you wanted me to bring over anything for the barbecue this Saturday?”

“Dad’s not allowed to eat more than two burgers,” Stiles chipped in. 

“Ignore him.”

“Just bring beer John, that’d be great.”

“We’ll bring a salad as well.”

“Just because you make a salad, Stiles, doesn’t mean I’ll eat it.”

“You will!”

“Let me remind you that I’m the one with the gun.”

“And I’ll remind you that I’m the one who knows all the fast food restaurant owners in town. If you eat too many burgers at the weekend I’m going to start telling them they can’t serve you.”

“Dammit, Stiles.”

Bostick started barking as Cora ran towards them from the field, red faced and beaming. 

“Never mind being too young for a family,” Peter said to Chris, “I feel too _old_ for one sometimes.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
